The WASM cmdlets were built to unblock adoption for many of our customers as well as serve as a common underpinning to our labs and internal tooling. There was an immediate demand for an automation API that would fit into the standard toolset for IT Pros. Given the adoption and penetration of PowerShell, we determined that cmdlets focused on this core audience would be the most effective way forward. Furthermore, since PowerShell is a full scripting language with complete access to .NET, this allows these cmdlets to be used as the basis for very complicated deployment and automation scripts as part of the application lifecycle.

How can you use them?

Every call to the Service Management API requires an X509 certificate and the subscription ID for the account. To get started, you need to upload a valid certificate to the portal and have it installed locally to your workstation. If you are unfamiliar with how to do this, you can follow the procedure outlined on the Windows Azure Channel9 Learning Center here.

Here are a few examples of how to use the cmdlets for a variety of common tasks: